


Metacarpals (Head Like A Steel Trap)

by tsohg



Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Anorexia, Body Image, Bulimia, Character Death, Crying, Drug Use, Eating Disorders, Gen, Major character death - Freeform, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Triggers, author is sorry, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-20 02:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3633156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsohg/pseuds/tsohg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it starts, everything is heavy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metacarpals (Head Like A Steel Trap)

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags for trigger warnings if anything triggers you. Could be spoiler-ish but better safe than sorry.

It doesn't start with this.

It doesn't start with bony, blue-purple fingers, cold bones, woozy head.

When it starts, everything is heavy.

* * *

"What happened to your knuckles?" is not a question you know how to answer anymore.

You played too much, too fast. Your hands are a mess.

You scratched them sore, half-asleep, anxious.

You don't know what happened.

* * *

You know it takes too long, there's too much noise, know they know something is wrong but nobody says a thing.

They give you pointed glances when you eat too much, too quickly, when you keep buying mints and chewing gum and when you skip meals, when your hands shake.

Nobody says a thing.

* * *

You didn't expect to be caught.

At least, not in the way you were.

You didn't expect Tyler walking in, dropping to his knees with you and saying, _please what is wrong what do you need what do you need_ and you don't know. 

Your head won't stop spinning and you don't _know._

* * *

Tyler wants to talk about it.

You'd cried, both of you, and he'd cleaned you up and he'd stared at your split knuckles like he hadn't put two-and-two together a long time ago.

"I'm just sick."

Tyler laughs, this bitter, choking sound, says, "You're just sick? Josh-"

"I'm sick, Tyler, I'm fucking _sick,_ " you close your eyes. Your hands all pins-and-needles, you dig your fingernails into the back of your neck until the skin breaks, bleeding.

* * *

So Tyler knows.

Tyler knows, and Tyler doesn't stop you, doesn't know how.

On stage, he'll belt about purpose and meaning and being saved, but this is something Tyler won't be able to fix.

* * *

You spend more time in your cramped tour bus bunk and locked in the bathroom where the sight of yourself in the mirror is enough to make you want to claw your body down to bone.

You spend more time alone.

Alone means you don't have to eat.

* * *

You get baby-pink and white-and-blue and soft green pills from some roadie's skinny sister.

You read about what they will do to you, and you take them one chalky little capsule at a time.

They will help.

Your fingernails are cyanotic purple. You wonder, later on, if there will be hospitals, fainting spells. 

You wonder if you will die from this.

* * *

Tyler has bad nights, too.

Of course.

Tyler has his own bad nights, and those are the times you feel the worst about it, because Tyler is fragile and hurting and _you're my best friend I should be able to help you_ and _I don't know what the point is_ and _I can't fix anybody_ and _I just want it to_ stop -

And you feel guilt settle back behind your collar bones, sit inside your empty stomach.

You don't say, "I can't fix you either."

You don't say, "I can't fix me either."

* * *

The skin on both of your hands is rubbed-raw. Fissured. Tooth-marked.

It's strangely comforting.

Something is wrong.

* * *

You and Tyler finish touring. You don't faint on stage the way you'd worried you would.

The knobs of your knuckles protrude through your torn skin and you can count every one of your ribs, each of your vertebrae.

You never eat too much anymore.

You look better. You are something hideous, still, and you can't look in the mirror yet without the need to punish yourself, but you look better.

* * *

Better is enough, until it isn't.

Better is enough until a bad night when you catch sight of your reflection in the bathroom. You fixate on the space below your ribs, the flesh on your arms, the whole of your awful awful awful body.

Then better isn't enough. Then everything is too heavy, everything is too much. You need to get out of it.

You open up your medicine cabinet. There are three familiar pill bottles.

There's a lot of them, now, the baby-pink and white-and-blue and soft green little capsules. You shake them out, slow, experimental.

Then you take them, dry, a fistful at a time. Your hands, all veins and skeleton-fingers, quiver.

Your vision is blue. Then it's red. Then you're dizzy, lightheaded. You're throwing up. Your head aches like a broken bone, like the worst migraine you've ever had.

The bathroom blurs, flips sideways in what seems like slow motion.

Then your vision goes dark.


End file.
